Tres Leches Cake

Today was Luis' birthday dinner. Tres Leches is his favorite cake (and I have to admit mine too) and of course it's a bit complicated to make. The mexican store around the corner sells them I think from $40-100 depending on the size. I have a very hard time spending that much money on a cake, so of course I went online. The only recipe I could find similar to theirs with a filling is the one from Married To a Mexican. It's delicious.

I started around 9:30 this morning and was done around 1, though I kind of took my time a little bit.

In making this I got to incorporate the new recipe of the week: the butter cream icing that Ann suggested to me, it is wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing!! I doubt I'll be buying icing again, except when I'm pressed for time.

FYI: butter cream icing doesn't work out well when you substitute margarine. You might be able to substitue it for baking but the icing is a no go (I can hear you saying "DUH" now, but I'm new at this stuff...). We had lots of margarine but were low on butter so I gave it a try; this icing was used for the decorating instead of the main icing because the taste was a little off.

Here's the un-iced cake. It split when I moved it...so I pasted it together with some icing. It didn't really work but it's better than nothing. The milk poured over it makes the cake very sticky...so it's easy to get crumbs in 

the icing.

The decorating wasn't as nice as I had hoped, but I was tired and ready to get it done. 

All in all, it was a success...Luis' sister and brother in law thought I bought it at the store...so I suppose that's the best compliment I could have gotten, that is after all my inspiration.

Here's a slice of it to give you a better idea. The filling is like a pudding/whipped cream mixture with strawberries and bananas. I love it. Maybe a little too much...

I also wanted to add a picture of yesterday's lunch. I was inspired to take a photo of it. Though my mom made it, it's my grandma's vegetable soup recipe. Just the smell alone takes me to her kitchen. 

It looks quite messy, but it's delicious. I'm pretty sure this is one of the very few ways you can get me to eat cabbage.

By the way, we got a dog...and he STILL needs a name, a week later. He's Arlo according to the vet's office but I don't really think that fits him.

He's a very good dog..potentially. He doesn't bite at people, the baby included, but he's gotten comfortable around here and the puppy in him is coming out quickly. Tonight he's been running back and forth throughout the house and barking for attention. He finally settled down...hopefully for the night.